I first met Alice Gerrard in Mt. Airy, North Carolina in 1994 at the first Old-Time Music and Radio Conference. She asked me to write an article for the Old Time Herald about the internet newsgroup I had started to discuss old-time music. I’m not sure when I first heard her music, but it was probably when she was recording with Hazel Dickens in their duo, Hazel and Alice. I knew a bit about her history in bluegrass and old-time music, and I once met her brother at one of her concerts. He told me a bit about what she was like as a young girl growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, in what is now Fremont. I have learned a lot more about Alice from her new 176-page memoir, which is also full of wonderful photos, many taken by Alice. The book was released on December 2, 2025.

The book has seven chapters and an introduction entitled “How It All Began.” The introduction begins with her Antioch college friend (and later her first husband) Jeremy Foster handing her the 1952 Folkways six-LP Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music, which influenced so many people who became musicians. Alice was born in Seattle, but after her father died when she was eight years old, they moved to a farm in Irvington, which is now a district of Fremont. In those days, Alice’s biggest wish was to have a horse, and eventually her mother got her one. Alice’s mother remarried a teacher at UC Berkeley, and the family moved to Oakland. From there Alice went to Ohio to attend Antioch College.  She married Jeremy in 1956. They dropped out of Antioch, and he was drafted into the US army. After Jeremy got out of the army, they returned to Antioch where Jeremy got his degree, and in 1961, they moved to Washington, D.C. Jeremy had gone to high school with Mike Seeger, and he became a big presence and music influence in their lives. This material is covered in the first chapter, “Like a Blind Hog Stumbled on an Acorn.”

Alice and Jeremy had a daughter Cory, when they were living in Ohio, and two sons, Joel and Jesse, and a daughter, Jenny, after they moved to DC. However, Jeremy died in an automobile crash in 1963. Alice was then a single mother with four children. I won’t mention the long list of people who befriended and helped Alice in that period, but many of them were legends of bluegrass and old-time. When Mike Seeger’s marriage ended, he and Alice began a relationship, married, and moved to southern Pennsylvania. They were married for ten years, but the marriage came undone in 1980, though they remained friends and musical collaborators. In this chapter, Alice mentions their band, the Strange Creek Singers with Mike Alice, Hazel Dickens, Tracy Schwarz, and Lamar Grier. That band co-existed with the New Lost City Ramblers and Hazel and Alice. Alice also mentions the Harmony Sisters, her band with Jeanie McLerie and Irene Herrmann.

It was through Mike that Alice met Hazel Dickens, whose name is the title of chapter 2. Alice first met Hazel in 1953. They began singing at parties and eventually became a performing and recording duo after Peter Siegel and David Grisman, who were visiting from New York, offered to approach Moe Asch about recording them. That first recording included Lamar Grier on banjo, Grisman on mandolin, and Chubby Wise on fiddle.  Hazel and Alice recorded a second album for Folkways which was released later when their first album for Rounder Records came out. This chapter also discusses Bill Monroe, who befriended Hazel and Alice and gave them a song he wrote but had not recorded, “The One I Love Is Gone.” The partnership lasted until 1976, though they had a reunion in 1997, which I think I saw in Berkeley. I don’t think it is covered in the book, but I also saw them perform once at Warren Hellman’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco with Warren sitting on the edge of the stage. Alice had been brought out, along with Ginny Hawker and Carol Elizabeth Jones, to sing with Hazel as a surprise birthday present for Warren.

Chapter 3, “Find the Folk, Reaching for the Roots,” is about Alice’s encounters with many musicians, both bluegrass and old-time, at festivals. Chapter 4, “Searching for a Better World,” covers Alice’s meeting Anne Romaine which led to Alice participating in tours of the Southern Festival of Song, later known as the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project. Like the other chapters, when Alice meets someone, there are generally insets about them along with amazing photos.

Chapter 5, “Sprout Wings and Fly,” is about meeting Tommy Jarrell and helping Cece Conway and Les Blank make a film about him. Chapter 6, “A Lifetime in Less Than a Decade,” is about the time when Alice lived near Galax, Virginia from 1981 to 1989.  Among those Alice met there was Luther Davis, and there is a long section about him. Alice and Andy Cahan recorded him, along with Roscoe and Leone Parish on the LP, “The Old-Time Way.”

The final chapter, “The Old-Time Herald; or, How (Not?) to Start a Magazine,” is, of course, about how Alice started the magazine on a shoestring while she was still living in Galax. There is an Epilogue as well, where Alice talks about her more recent bands, Tom, Brad, and Alice (with Tom Sauber and Brad Leftwich), a duo with Beverly Smith, and then the Piedmont Melody Makers with Cliff Hale, Chris Brashear, and Jim Watson. There is also a photo of the Herald Angels, Alice’s band with Kay Justice and Gail Gillespie, the second editor of the Herald.

Of course, you will find a lot more interesting detail in the book itself than I could possibly cover a this review. If you have any interest in bluegrass, old-time music, or in the musicians who play them, you will find this book to be a riveting read. And the 102 photos included are also a treasure. You can get it here.